MS Cure

[Lor301]

When does everyone think there will be a cure or some kind of treatment (stem cell maybe) to help people with MS? Ten years? Twenty? Fifty?

[HVAC]

Genetic testing on a thousand MS patients is a pretty big study.

Alex

[essdipity]

My first thought was that no cure is possible when the cause isn't actually clear. There's some they do know about causes, but it's still so elusive. Why does person A get MS but not person B?

I too don't subscribe to conspiracy theories. Drug companies, I believe, are not as evil as some others think. Yet they are not researching a way to find a cure for MS, of course not knowing the cause, nor are they particularly interested in finding that cause or those causes.

These days it's the pharmaceutical outfits that are in the vanguard of a great deal of medical research, not universities or major government agencies. Pharmaceutical giants are profit-making and profit-seeking organizations, and they will follow the money when it comes to making research decisions. I can't say that's wrong, really---they simply have other motivation besides benefiting society. I don't think though, that they'd be interested in taking the glory for finding an MS cure (even assuming a more or less generic cure is possible) if it didn't mean huge profits.

The trouble is, there's presently no entity to fill the gap between profit motivation and pure science/benefit to mankind, and there's not likely to be one in the foreseeable future. So we're stuck.

ess

[doublevision1]

I don't think there will ever be one magic bullet. What I hope for is:

1. A treatment that stops MS relapses and progression in its tracks.
2. A treatment that reverses neurological damage (eg: re grows myelinated, makes lesions entirely disappear)
3. A vaccine to prevent those at risk from ever developing - once there is greater clarity and a narrowing down of who is at risk.

I believe more research will reveal that MS is not one disease, but many that have traditionally been lumped together. RRMS is very different from PPMS for example. NMO used to be considered a variant of MS. Now it is recognized as a separate and distinct condition with a very different treatment approach. If there's ever a cure it won't be the same as for RRMS or PPMS.

The pharma companies are obviously motivated by profit, but I don't subscribe to the notion that they don't want to see a cure. A cure or cures would be hugely profitable. Who wouldn't want to be the first out of that gate?  If the conspiracy theories were true, they wouldn't be developing DMDs at all but keeping us ill and plying us with loads more symptomatic meds than we are already taking.

[kwarendorf]

Immisceo is right. In the US there are currently 10 FDA approved treatments for MS. The one I'm taking (Rituxan) is not FDA approved but is widely used. So that makes 11 treatments available today!

Research into the cure is ongoing. First they have to figure out what causes MS and they haven't. Stem cell research of all kinds is going on all over the world. My very own neuro is conducting the first FDA approved autologus (your own) stem cell trial in the country.  

There is every reason to think that they'll figure it out sooner rather than later :-)

Kyle

[HVAC]

I am participating in a study at Duke University for MS that is not tied to a drug company it is a genetic study. They are trying to get a thousand people with MS to give blood and urine twice a year. I am also going to be in one for PPMS. They are looking for either a cure or a blood test to diagnose MS.

Things have advanced more than I thought since I was diagnosed in 2009.

Alex

[immisceo]

Here's the thing: the drug study I participate in is run by a pharmaceutical company. They pay the teaching hospital for my (and others') participation. These moneys are then directly funnelled into the funding of the fellowships and research that the purely academic, university researchers do. It is a much more grey reality than the black and white of the "us" versus "them" conspiracy theories allow for.

And Lor301, I'm not sure what you mean. We do have some kind of treatment; about 10 kinds of some kind of treatment and many more in the pipeline. Is it close to a cure? No, not yet. But the reality of those of us living with MS today is vastly improved than those diagnosed only a couple of decades ago, thanks to both academic and pharmaceutical research.

[Poppy7402]

If there is ever a cure it will only be because of the dedicated men and women who research but don't work for drug companies sadly.  The pharmaceutical companies don't want a cure as MS is a multi-billion dollar industry for them.

[ghost39]

Hopefully ever advancing, but I honestly don't think there will be a cure in our life time.